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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Toon of the Week

Quote of the Week

The global battle against climate change has passed a historic turning point with China’s huge coal burning finally having peaked, according to senior economists.

They say the moment may well be a significant milestone in the course of the Anthropocene, the current era in which human activity dominates the world’s environment.

China is the world’s biggest polluter and more than tripled its coal burning from 2000 to 2013, emitting billions of tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide. But its coal consumption peaked in 2014, much earlier than expected, and then began falling.

The economists argue in a new paper on Monday that this can now be seen as permanent trend, not a blip, due to major shifts in the Chinese economy and a crackdown on pollution.

“I think it is a real turning point,” said Lord Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, who wrote the analysis with colleagues from Tsinghua University in Beijing. “I think historians really will see [the coal peak of] 2014 as a very important event in the history of the climate and economy of the world.”

Graphic of the Week

He Said What?

Sen. James Inhofe says school children are being “brainwashed” into believing in climate change and that parents need to “un-brainwash” them.

Inhofe, an outspoken climate change skeptic and chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said he came to the realization when his granddaughter challenged him on his denial of the science behind global warming.

“Our kids are being brainwashed,” the Oklahoma Republican told conservative radio host Eric Metaxas on a recent appearance reported by the liberal blog Right Wing Watch.>

“My own granddaughter came home one day and said … ‘Popi, why is it you don’t understand global warming?’ I did some checking, and Eric, the stuff that they teach our kids nowadays, they are brainwashed — you have to un-brainwash them when they get out,” Inhofe said.

Remember Greg Hunt is the same guy, who, as env minister couple years back, were famously learning about the science of AGW from Wikipedia, only those fragments that suited his denying narrative. He has also approved Adani’s Carmichael coal mine and dredging of Abbott Point (is it just a coincidence or a meaningful name after a person to take most shame) to export that coal thus maximise the "good for humanity" business. Certainly Greg did not undone damage his ignorance has done back them (will never undo) but he's trying in his new role as science minister to rebrand himself as climate science accepting guy.

Yes, Greg Hunt was env minister in the government that made the outrageous intervention you mention. The guy who explained their rationale (negative impact on tourism( is described as "the environment department spokesperson". That's obviously Greg himself or one of his staff working for him.

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